Users of computer systems employ various applications to render media files, including multimedia files. A media file is a digital file that contains digitized information, such as text, audio, video, images, and so forth. A multimedia file is a digital file that contains multiple types of media. A common example of a multimedia file is a video file that contains a correlated sequence of images and audio, such as a movie. Rendering is the process of converting information from digital to analog form so that a person can perceive the information, such as by displaying text, playing back audio or video, drawing an image, and so forth.
Another example of a multimedia file is a collaboration file that is created, manipulated, or stored by collaboration software. Collaboration software enables multiple users to share an application, view an online presentation, or collaborate in other ways using computing devices that are engaged in a collaboration session. A collaboration session enables participants to share information or applications via their computing devices. The collaboration software can record the collaboration session in a multimedia file, which can contain audio, video, images, presentation graphics, mouse cursor movements, keyboard input, text, documents, and other facets of the collaboration.
Media files can become very large. As an example, users may collaborate in a collaboration session that lasts for several hours. The collaboration session may also span multiple sessions so that, for example, a collaboration file has information from all collaboration sessions that, together, last for hours. As another example, a movie can span two hours or longer.
It is difficult for users to locate relevant or desirable content in large media files. As an example, a user may desire to locate a particular scene in a movie, a particular training segment in a training-related collaboration file, and so forth. The user can find it difficult to locate the relevant or desirable portions because the user may not know the position in the media files at which the desirable portions are located. Conventionally, the user may start rendering a media file from the beginning until the relevant or desirable content is rendered. Alternatively, the user may estimate a position and employ a user interface element (e.g., a slider bar or timeline) to begin rendering the media file at various points until the relevant or desirable content is located.